Starship Asterisk*

And because I am a complete amateur in all other fields of astronomy, I gain my knowledge from listening to the professionals. I conclude that those that hold the majority opinion among the experts are more likely to be correct than those that hold the minority opinion. That is because I know that ...

I think that these types of photos raise more questions then they answer, 40,000 km is simply too far.

RedFishBlueFish wrote:In this century, unlike the last, the light of democracy seems to be flickering in the United States of America as well.

The rejection of an establishment is actually proof of a strong democracy, unless you're opposed to change of course.

RedGargoyle wrote:Today's picture is great but appeared already on 16.03.2015.

Lots of APODs get repeated.

For purely human psychological reasons (not understood) any full moon looks much bigger near the horizon than it does high in the sky. About the moon illusion... is it not simply the case that when near the horizon the moonlight is refracted by passing through a greater quantity of atmosphere, and ...

For purely human psychological reasons (not understood) any full moon looks much bigger near the horizon than it does high in the sky. About the moon illusion... is it not simply the case that when near the horizon the moonlight is refracted by passing through a greater quantity of atmosphere, and ...

It has always surprised me how poor and anti-climactic the ending to Dracula actually is, as if Stoker was rushing to finish the novel before his in-laws came to visit.

It happened to be Morehead's traditional XMAS program where they demonstrated how the Star of Bethlehem might have been a close conjunction between Jupiter and Venus (near Regulus) on June 17, 2 BC. However, " since the conjunction would have been seen in the west at sunset [as in today's APOD...

Okay if you say so....

If its 'only' 4.25 light years distant, and a probe like say New Horizons (Pluto) were sent out to it, at a reported speed of ~50,000 mph (?) then a quick back of the stamp calculation says it would take ~ 4000+ years to get there Sorry RocketRon, 50000 mph is half a billion miles per year. Proxima...

omg what a brilliant image.

When I hold my iphone at the eyepiece I get better photos than this!

The naming convention for these events is annoying; GW151226 follows the American dating format but that is confusing to Europeans who would use 261215 - these are discoveries for mankind and not just Americans.

I did not think that the measurements to astronomical objects lacked so much precision. Yes indeed, even the estimated distance to the great searchlight Deneb ranges from ~1400LY to 3,000 LY. So we don't know if the light left it after the end of the Roman Empire or just when they were putting the ...

Boy, they're really coming out of the woodwork today...

Ann wrote: The Nobel Prize committee are known for waiting a long time before they award the prize to the person(s) behind a breakthrough discovery.

Peter Higgs might disagree.

LONG LIVE ALBERT!!! Hope he gets a Nobel Prize....He certainly deserves it. The next prize in physics should go to Thorne, Drever, and Weiss. Anything else would devalue the Physics prize as much as the nomination of Trump for the Peace Prize devalued it. Ever since it was given to three (!) left-w...

The link for an 'even brighter supernova' doesn't seem to be working.

Nope, the consensus seems to be 27 million LY and not 21 million.

Considering that the $$$ expended went to buy materials and pay salaries of those involved in development and construction of the probe, the $$$ aren't lost per se, they are still in circulation here. The only investment that could even be considered as Lost is the time spent. So if you wreck your ...

Gravity is an extremely weak force, and it is the product of a distortion of spacetime by mass. A distortion that precisely explains the behavior of those "little specks of matter". Hmmm or maybe the distortion describes the behaviour of matter rather than explains it. The juxtaposition o...

3857 appears to be the number of "Comets Discovered " through the MPC Yes maybe they just haven't got round to cataloging all the Soho discoveries - Here's a list of Last Observation dates: http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/LastCometObs.html and an historical list, including hund...